1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a drive-heading warning device, and in particular, to a helmet apparatus for automated vehicle heading alert capable of dynamically reflecting a traveling state of a vehicle and automatically generating a drive-heading warning for pedestrians and vehicles around.
2. Related Art
As those have been devised, automobiles or motorcycles are generally equipped with indicator lights which can produce actively visual warnings movement state of a vehicle. To be specified, the indicator lights are direction lights, brake lights, or other types of light having a warning function of the vehicles. In the classification, the direction light is used for indicating the vehicle-driving direction, and warning the other vehicles around to keep away a safe distance.
A conventional direction light is ordinarily controlled by the vehicle driver through switching a related mechanism on the vehicle, such as a toggle switch operated by hands or fingers, and, generally, the corresponding decision is usually made by the driver's brain. The visual warning, which is often provided by flash-light signals, can be classified into front-positioned ones and rear-positioned ones, and situated approximately at four corners of the vehicle body. For a crowded traffic, the indicator light of the vehicle is easily ignored by the vehicles around due to its relatively low position, and, in addition, the driver may be too nervous to forget the operation of the indicator light; therefore, there is a room for improvement.
The published Chinese patent CN2696925, entitled automatic warning device for speed reducing or steering of vehicle, provides an automatic warning device for speed reducing or steering of a vehicle. The device has guiding pipes with a proper inclination angle; inner portions of the guiding pipes are provided with conductive beads; an upper end surface of the guiding pipe is provided with a guiding post functioning as a switch. Each set of external wires of the guiding posts is connected to a third brake light arranged on the vehicle. An inertia force generated during sudden braking or steering of the vehicle drives the conductive beads to move and hence turn on the circuit and turn on the brake light. Moreover, Yang Shengxing in TW Patent No. M299488 in the year 2006, Lin Jiexing in TW Patent No. M351002 in the year 2008, and Luo Jianming and Shi Zhihao in TW Patent No. M354128 in the year 2008 each similarly provide a warning helmet used for vehicles, in which by means of a wireless receiver for receiving signals, switching signals for a direction light or brake light can be synchronously transmitted to a receiver and a circuit control module on the safety helmet in a wireless manner, thereby controlling the direction light and brake light set on the safety helmet.
The U.S. Pat. No. 5,615,132, granted in 1997 to Horton and Newton and entitled method and apparatus for determining position and orientation of a movable object using accelerometers, and the TW invention patent I320702 in the year 2010, invented by Lu Shudong, et al. and entitled method for dynamically providing direction signal and safety helmet using same, both provide a safety helmet capable of providing position or direction signals, which reflects a left or right inclination action of a user or a speed change into signals by using an accelerometer. The patent invented by Horton and Newton is mainly used in application of virtual reality, and the patent invented by Lu Shudong, et al. is used for actuating a driving light set, but the sensing principle thereof is mainly based on an acceleration change rather than an angular speed displacement change of a gyroscopic device.
In the published TW patent TW201106886, entitled safety helmet with indicator light and direction indicating method using the safety helmet, the direction indicating method using the helmet includes detecting, by using a detection device, time it takes for a main body that has turned leftward or rightward for an angle to return to an original position, and when the time reaches a preset value, driving the left light or the right light to emit light for a preset period of time. This technology mainly detects an action of the head of a user and the duration of the action, and thereby turns on a corresponding indicator light device. However, in practice, a vehicle driver wearing a helmet usually observes the situation behind at left and right sides through left and right review mirrors, and inevitably turns the head to the left or right during the observation. Therefore, in the method provided in this published patent, misoperations occur easily, in which a user action of looking at the left or right review mirror is taken by mistake as a left turning or right turning operation and thus the left light or right light is driven to limit light.
To date, the conventional design for direction lights on a helmet are, in principle, actuated directly through a direct ON/OFF operation or a decision calculation based on a physical measurement of sensors, such as inclination sensor or accelerometer. However, the inexact employment of sensory methodology is basically prone to noise interference with the highly vibrational vehicles on an uneven road surface.
Therefore, how to provide an effective direction detection which can exactly indicate the direction of a moving vehicle is an urgent issue to be solved by the inventor of the present invention.